This happened to me today at lunch in Lima, Peru:
I was sitting enjoy menu of the day (a great deal at $2.50 US! I love this country sometimes) at a table that was closest to the sidewalk in a little casual local restaurant. Some guy comes up to my table and asks to sit there and my response was an emphatic "no." His reaction is what had me going - he looked confused and shocked at my response and repeated a couple of times in case I didn't understand. He then spent the next 5 minutes trying to explain that he wanted to sit at the table and if the seat was taken. Being that I'm fluent in Spanish and understood everything he was saying (even his hand motions and attempt at broken English), my response was still obviously "no." He finally wandered back to the sidewalk all confused and explained it all to his family that were a few feet away apparently. I'm not exactly sure what the hell happened and they sure didn´t look like beggars. I can only assume they went to the restaurant next door as he wandered back as forth outside. In his defense the restaurant was packed (although I wasn´t the only one sitting alone with vacant seats), but it was definitely an odd request. Who knows, maybe I was at his lucky table or he liked the way my food looked.